The average citizen, with his eyes glued to the 'box', has only the vaguest idea what an ambassador does. In the press he is pictured standing by a carriage from the royal or presidential palace with his chest covered in gold lace or in evening dress in the middle of the morning, splashed with orders and decorations like an old-fashioned swimming instructor. In Osber Lancaster's cartoons his white tie and broad sash are accompanied by the paunch and debilitated look of one whom the restrictions of his profession have required to make do for vices with an excess of food, drink and sleep. Questions in parliament suggest that he is solely occupied in giving extravagant parties at the tax-payer's expense if he is British, or in ignoring the parking regulations if he is a foreigner in London. The jaundiced ambassador may sometimes be inclined to conclude that he is regarded principally as a service agency: that to the tourist his only serious responsibility is to produce money when a wallet is stolen that to the businessman his sole purpose is to promote the businessman's interest that to the press correspondent he is there to provide information for the correspondent's copy and a good story out of anything that happens in the embassy that to visiting politicians he is the provider of free board and lodging and an introduction and shopping service, and that to Mr. Le Carre's readers he is the man who keeps the spy out of the cold. In his more charitable moments he will admit that the tourist in difficulty is entitled to ask for the embassy's help that the businessman is promoting his country's exports and that it is one of the ambassador's most important duties to help him that cooperation between the embassy and the press correspondent is useful to both that he is paid to give hospitality and has the staff to provide services to visiting politicians and will be well advised to do what he can for them and he will assure you that the only spies whose acquaintance he cultivates are those defeated in the last chapter by James Bond. Perhaps the ambassador gains some spurious comfort from those writers to whom the diplomat is, by definition, a paragon of all the virtues, brilliantly perceptive, patient, loyal, modest and of the highest integrity, able to win the confidence of 'the ruling few', handsome, not too witty, an accomplished host, expert in food and wines, and speaking four or five foreign languages perfectly. But he knows in his more sober moments that in real life he is no better nor worse endowed than his contemporaries in other professions, though there is always a danger that the requirements of the voracious god, security, will reduce him to a dead level of unenterprising mediocrity. He knows too that the better informed of the public do not regard him as wallowing in luxury, but sympathize with him for having to keep a government hotel and endure a regular diet of official parties notable only for their tedium and their capacity to induce mental and physical exhaustion. In the old days, the ambassador was purely political. Nowadays, whatever his personal predilections, he will recognise that he must give serious attention to matters other than politics. He must regard himself as an economist, a commercial traveller, an advertising agent for his country he wields the weapon of culture for political ends he promotes scientific and. technical exchanges and administers development aid. He cannot wholly detach himself from the technicalities and personal inconvenience which accompany the battle for intelligence. He must concern himself with the relations not only of governments, but of politicians, scientists, musicians, actors, authors, footballers, and trade unionists. But he continues to have a basic political job, to negotiate with the other government and to keep his own government informed about anything in the country to which he is accredited which affects his coun